1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to content derived systems, in general and to an apparatus and method for manipulating of multimedia based on the content therein, in particular.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Systems offering capture of interactions comprising voice, video, and other multimedia, including voice over IP, e-mails, and the like, are currently used by organizations. Organizations capture multimedia interactions in order to examine the interactions in real time or off line. Reasons for examining interactions could include the quality assurance of agent's performance, security purposes, compliance purposes, and the like. For example, call centers use capture of interaction and logging devices to accomplish the tracking of transactions, monitor agents′ interactions with customers and perform quality assurance on the interactions performed. Presently access restrictions or limitations to interactions are based on restrictions based on the identity of the person accessing the information, the type and identity of the interaction to be accessed or in general the static properties of the interaction. Thus, a supervisor or an agent wishing to listen to or view a captured interaction can do so with proper authorization or access rights. When such an agent or supervisor receives the clearance or has suitable access rights to an interaction he or she may review, access or manipulate the entire interaction. In a first example, if the interaction is a telephone call, the supervisor listening to the interaction can listen to the entire phone call and to all the speakers participating in the call. In a second example the interaction comprises a video interaction with associated voice interaction where the captured voice is substantially synchronized with the video. Currently, the person having access rights to view the video can view the entire video footage which comprises the interaction and may listen to the voice coupled there with. Persons requesting limited access rights in an organization will be not provided with limited or restricted access to specific aspects or portions of the interaction. A supervisor having access rights to view employee's e-mails will be able to view entire set of e-mail correspondences despite the fact that some of the e-mails, or messages coupled within a single e-mail, could be private or could be associated with another department in the organization. Granted access rights for supervisors to review interactions performed by agents led call centers to dedicate a telephone for personal phone; such telephone is not connected to the capture and logging systems so as to avoid the possibility that a supervisor or another person in the organization will listen in to personal call. Interactions however, comprise many aspects and elements which are presently available to such persons receiving access rights to view the entire interaction. Interactions may comprise a number of speakers, a plurality of persons appearing within a video footage or stream, messages received from a number of persons, names of persons carbon copied or blind carbon copied on messages, data and information which may be related to various departments having different access rights or different organizations or campaigns, and the like.
The presently available systems do not restrict or allow or qualify access to different aspects or different logical content based segments of the interactions and does not assign sensitivity level or access rights to elements or segments of an interaction. A certain segment of the interaction could be vocal, such as voice spoken by one or more speakers. Such segments of interactions could also include visual elements, such as the visual presentation of the appearance of one or more persons (but not all) in a video footage or stream and spoken words by such persons, information or data associated with one issue or department or campaign or persons within the organization. The access permission for segments is not time dependent and is not associated with other activities or with information generated or with policy set in later stages.
Organizations face an ongoing conflict between the requirement to provide employees at all levels with access to interactions so as to perform their assigned tasks and the requirement to minimize risks from access to sensitive, privileged or otherwise inappropriate information. An example that reflects these requirements can be found in the COPC (Customer Operations Performance Center) Performance Management System Standards. The COPC Performance Management System Standards, published during the year 2004, is a set of management practices and training for customer-centric service operation that provides that organizations must have a documented privacy policy that considers any legal requirements and defines how end-user privacy will be protected. The COPC guidelines specifically provide that the organization must have rules how an interaction is monitored and a plan for communicating the findings of all transactions monitored to staff.
In addition, the cycle of information dissemination is increasingly shorted requiring on-the-fly solutions for access control of elements or segments of an interaction. Current systems rely on static definitions for accessing an entire interaction, at times time dependent, lacking the ability to selectively provide access to elements or segments of an interaction. Automatic or manual access approvals on-the-fly or even off-line to interactions is not presently available.
There is therefore a need in the art for an apparatus and method to enable selective and dynamic access to different types, different aspects, and different segments of an interaction.